10 Ways to Reinvent Yourself When You’re Stuck in Life

Discover how to reinvent yourself so you can make progress in your life.

Being and feeling stuck in life is an awful place to be. When you are stuck, it feels as though you are literally just spinning your wheels in the mud and are running around in circles. It also feels as though no matter what you do or say, nothing will ever change for the better and you’ll be stuck in a rut forever.

If you’re not careful, being stuck in life can magnify the fear, guilt, shame and/or apathy you’re already feeling. You can become even more stuck than you already are.

So rather than doing nothing and allowing yourself to get sucked into a really terrible rabbit hole, let’s explore 10 ways to reinvent yourself so you – and your life – can start to become unstuck.

So when life starts to feel a little too sticky, try these ways to reinvent yourself:

1) Focus on the Good

Whenever things aren’t going so well for me, I realize that it’s time to stop and take stock in what’s really going on in my life. Usually, I find that while some of it isn’t going so well, a fair amount of it still is.

Focusing on what is going well will help you take your mind off what isn’t going so well and will also allow you to get yourself out of your rut quickly. What you focus on magnifies. So you might as well focus on the good stuff.

2) Change Your Diet

Since 20 – 30 percent of us are obese and as most of the grocery store aisles are packed with processed foods, I think it’s safe to assume that we can all benefit from making healthier choices with our diets. Even if you aren’t overweight, incorporating healthier choices into your diet will only have positive results.

Not only might you lose a few pounds, but eating more fruit will increase your happiness and resilience levels, making it easier for you to naturally reinvent yourself to become a healthier, happier, and better version of you from the inside out.

3) Clear Out Physical Clutter

Want to reinvent yourself? Get rid of anything that you no longer like, use or need. Clutter is just stuff that isn’t the best of you so why keep it around? To complicate your life any longer than you have to?

By donating, selling and recycling your old stuff, you’ll actually be able to find the real YOU, which is a really easy way to reinvent yourself as the person you always wanted to be.

When you de-clutter properly, what you’re left with is the best possible version of yourself. It’s really motivating to live every day surrounded by the best of who you are right now.

4) Clear Our Emotional Clutter

It’s easier to deal with physical clutter because you can see it. Therefore, you know it’s there. Emotional clutter is much more difficult because it’s affecting how you think and do everything. Yet often, you’re not even aware of it at all.

The way you start to conquer emotional clutter is by becoming aware of your actions and then becoming aware of how you’re feeling throughout the day. This means asking yourself a bunch of questions like:

How am I feeling?

Why do I feel this way?

Is there anything I can change for the better in this moment?

This will help you to become more aware of yourself, your actions, and your feelings. It will also help you to make small changes to be and feel like a newer version of yourself.

5) Change Up Your Routine

An easy way to get stuck is to get yourself into such a routine that you’re on autopilot all the time. Your life has become so systematized you don’t even need to think about it anymore. That’s when life has become boring and monotonous; you feel AND look stuck.

While I’m all for systematizing the easy stuff, it doesn’t mean you can put it all on autopilot and never look at it again. Take a look at your life and see what can be eliminated, changed, or added to help you reinvent yourself.

6) Make Yourself Uncomfortable

People get stuck when they become too comfortable with their lives. We are meant to challenge ourselves! So try to do something each day that takes you slightly outside your comfort zone. It can be as simple as eating alone in a restaurant if you’re a naturally shy person, or finally wearing that teeny-weeny-yellow-polka-dot-bikini despite the fact you know everyone is looking.

Whatever it is, challenge yourself in some small way. You’ll find that you’ll start to feel more confident and that new opportunities will start to appear.

7) Reinvent Yourself – Get Up and Move

Move something – whether it’s your body, mind and/or spirit, get something moving because you cannot resolve your issues with the same energy you created them with. Be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things.

To get your mind moving, try reading a book, joining a meet-up, or start going to church. Get your body moving and the blood pumping by doing Pilates, running, or even taking up gardening. If you need a big change to shake things up, then consider a physical move into a new home, new city, or a new job.

Whether you choose to move a little or a lot, moving anything will start to help you get unstuck and on your way to reinventing the way you show up in your own life.

8) Express Yourself

Paint. Do yoga. Sing. Play an instrument. Write a short story. It doesn’t matter: just get creative and express yourself in some way.

This is a great method to get unstuck and reinvent yourself because creativity is just the truth of who you are coming out. It’s safe and healthy, and can be a wonderful new avenue for you to explore.

Whether you do it for money or just the plain joy of being creative, we are all creative beings and we all thrive better when we express ourselves in some way.

9) Take It Slow

When we get stuck, we really want to become unstuck as quickly as possible. What we don’t realize is that sometimes, we get stuck for a reason. When we take the time to look at our lives and how we feel about what’s currently going on, it gives us the ability to make small changes that can often have huge, lasting results.

You also don’t need to make huge, dramatic changes in order to reinvent yourself. Often making small, slow changes are the best way to become a new, better version of yourself that is easy for you to maintain. This means you’ve taken the time to really become a better version of yourself – rather than simply acting it out.

10) Create a Vision/Plan of Your Life

You may be stuck now but a great way to feel like you’re on a new path is to create a vision or plan of what you really want your life to look like. Write down what it should look like and feel like. Then, review that plan often. Cut out photos of what your perfect life looks like and paste it to a vision board.

Everyday, take steps to make those plans a reality and keep going until you actually start to become that vision. Half the battle of reinvention is knowing where you want to be. If you’re not sure what that looks like, a vision board or brainstorming can help you gain clarity on what you really want out of life.

When you’re ready to reinvent yourself, these tips should provide good guidance. Along the way, you’ll hopefully pick up some great habits to help keep you and your life running smoothly. They will help you get through any tough times that may come your way in the future.

Life isn’t always smooth. But when you have the proper tools to navigate it, you can get through the tough times more quickly and with much more grace and ease, than you can if you chose to get out of the situation by using panic and fear as your motivating factors.